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I looked in the mirror and singled out a gray strand amongst my full head of glossy brown hair. I pulled it, wincing, not because it hurt but because I was thinking of the old adage, “Pull one gray hair, three will grow in its place.”
Two others were already there, waiting to be plucked.
I was 17. Thanks, Mom.
My mother had prematurely gray hair. By the age of 40 she had lost a lot of her dark brown hair to a mostly gray palette. Of the four children, two of us got it and two of us didn’t. (Heh, heh, the two others inherited balding spots in front from our dad.)
It wasn’t until I was 27 that the gray hair began to be, well, a presence. I decided to get it dyed. The first hairdresser advised that I don a rubber cap with holes in it. Just getting it on hurt, but having the hair pulled through the holes was excruciating. Admittedly it would make a great Halloween costume and the streaks looked okay, but the pain factor made it a non-starter.
I found another hairdresser, Jim, who introduced me to a ‘glaze.’ A glaze covers only the gray and doesn’t build up on your natural color. And the color fades over time so there’s never an obvious stripe of your old color at the top of your head.
That’s the ticket, I thought.
After a few sessions, I realized how easy it was to apply the glaze. I convinced my hairdresser to tell me the product name, and thereafter I paid him only for the haircut.
I then paid approximately $5 to dye my own hair.
I was pleased with myself, and everything went well until my hair was two-thirds gray. Then I started the worst of experiments trying to get the right shade of brown over so much gray. There were embarrassing trips to the hairdresser to have the color stripped out. There’s nobody more judgey than a hairdresser, except for those having their hair expertly colored.
Eventually it was suggested that I go blond and that seemed to work for a time.
XXX
In all these years, I wondered why my mother didn’t dye her hair. Apparently she just wasn’t interested, nor was she interested in cutting her rather thin, long hair that she always wore in a bun. But Perry introduced me to an affordable hair cutter named Hildy at the Interior Department (!) building down near the White House, and I in turn convinced my mother to come downtown to at least get a trim and maybe a light body wave.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
When work got underway on Mom’s locks, she decided to spring for the body wave.
I was lounging in a side chair reading People magazine or else I might have caught where the drift of their conversation was going. Before I could stop it, Hildy was slathering hair dye over Mom’s body wave. Mom sat calmly in the chair, unsuspecting of what was going on. Hiding behind my magazine, I searched the admittedly slight depth of knowledge I had regarding hairdressing practices and came up with only one thing.
Very bad.
I sank in my chair hiding behind my magazine, waiting for the inevitable.
Well, I thought, maybe it won’t be so bad.
It was.
“What…my…my, my hair is BLUE!!!” Mom said with alarm when Hildy finished blow drying her hair. She repeated more and more the now obvious truth, “MY HAIR IS BLUE!”
I listened to her all the way to the car as she grew more agitated by the step. I was squarely in her cross hairs as if I myself had administered the dye job.
Luckily, I got her in to see Jim the next morning who stripped the blue color out. I could picture her on her way there,darting from doorstep to doorstep with a large scarf over her head a la Queen Elizabeth the II.
She always felt I was to blame for this, but I say Perry had a hand in it by introducing me to a subpar hairdresser.
XXX
The blond bomb look worked well for me up until a point, the point at which, after 40 years, I just got tired of dying my hair. I knew that underneath the blond my hair was completely gray, except for a small, stubborn spot of brown that lingered on the nape of my neck.
I decided to strip the blonde dye out of my hair. There are a variety of products available for this, and I chose the aptly named “Oops,” guaranteed to get all the dye out. I didn’t consult an experienced hairdresser but went blithely ahead. After all the years of dying my hair myself, I thought I knew everything.
I didn’t.
Once I got the Oops onto my hair, it began clumping. As it began clumping, it began rolling off my head like lumps of molten shit, dropping on the bathroom counter, my Galileo tee shirt, my pants and the floor. At least it wasn’t my Godzilla shirt.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same
God who had endowed us with senses, reason,
and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
I grabbed the package and ran to the kitchen, leaving blobs in my wake. The kitchen sink is the only one I can use to rinse my hair. I looked the package, which said “Take full fifteen minutes to rinse Oops out of your hair.”
Fifteen minutes! What the hell, my back is killing me now. I’ll never make it.
So I balanced on my belly on the side of the sink, cursing and spitting while I tried to get this gunk out of my hair.
Well, I didn’t make it to fifteen; I might have made to eight.
The clumps came out and I was left with one-third of the dye gone and the rest in stripes.
Well, it could have been worse. At least it looks like highlights of blond that someone might have requested.
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